The Secret to Marital Awesomeness

Spend less time together.

Actually, this is the secret to keeping any relationship awesome.  When you spend too much time with anyone – your kids, coworkers, friends, brothers or sisters, parents, aunts and uncles, and, yes, even your Beloved – it causes friction.

Celebrity magazines know this and you should too.  With enough time, anyone will get on your nerves.

When it’s a celebrity, we call it backlash.  When it’s your spouse, you think it’s because you are not in love anymore.

Because you are spending so much time trying to pay the bills, take care of the kids, clean the house, and do laundry, you are more like coworkers than spouses.  People hate work!  When all the time you spend with your Beloved is spent doing work (i.e. crap you don’t really want to do), it’s no wonder that your love is eroded.

At the end of the day, you need to still be aware of your partner as a man or woman.  When you become coworkers, you suck the sexual polarity out of your lives.  You may as well be living with your sibling!

What can you do?

1.  Don’t do chores together.  Even if you are doing them at the same time, you shouldn’t both be doing laundry.  Divide and conquer.  The celebrate by spending time together doing something you want to do.  When you keep associating your spouse with activities you love, you reaffirm your existing love.

2.  Date night.  I don’t care what it takes.  One night a week needs to be date night.  I know people who spend one night a month, or three nights a year on a ‘date’.  If the only dates you are on coincide with your birthday, your spouse’s birthday, Valentine’s, and your anniversary, then you need to revamp your dating schedule fast!  As in, get one.

You might be thinking to yourself that you have kids and, ergo, no time for dating.  Unfortunately, you are the couple who needs date night the MOST.

Have some fun!

3.  Do not put your kids first.  Your kids will eventually leave the nest, but you and your spouse will – in a perfect world – be together forever.

Kids feel happier and safer in a home with a solid foundation.  Your marriage is the foundation of your family.  Neglect the foundation and you may not be with your husband or wife forever.

Kids are never happy when they are the familial center of attention.  They are whiny, self-centered, grasping little monsters who will suck all of your time from you if you let them.

4.  Have a boys night out.  (Or a girls night out!)  Cultivate some friends outside of your marriage.  Being married should not be your whole life, it should just be the biggest part of it. 

Go bowling, play paintball, shopping, get with a chess or poker group, or a knitting club.  Engage in an activity you like with people of the same sex and do it away from your spouse.

I don’t understand why people seem to feel that they need to have identical interests as their husband or wife.  Feigning an interest in a sport just because your spouse plays is not necessarily supportive.  Letting them out of the house to play the sport, however, is.

5.  Dial down your expectations.  Somewhere along the way, we decided that we needed Swiss Army Spouses.  That your spouse should be your partner, best friend, maid, caregiver, superparent, confidante, and psychic.

ARGH.

That’s too much to expect of anyone, including you.  Lower your expectations.  Don’t expect your husband to be interested in your coworker’s marital problems.  And don’t expect your wife to give a crap about the never-ending game of World of WarCraft.  If you can get her to play with you, fine, but don’t think she is a bad spouse for not caring.

Realize that your spouse is not your twin.  You shouldn’t feel like you need to have the same interests, activities, or even the same friends.  You shouldn’t be living separate lives, but you shouldn’t be trying to live identical ones either.